AL East Notes: Napoli, Red Sox, Price, Saltalamacchia

Alex Speier of WEEI.com has the details of Mike Napoli‘s contract with the Red Sox. The base of the deal is $5MM but incentives could boost the overall value to $13MM. The catcher can either hit the $13MM mark by achieving benchmarks in days on the active roster and plate appearance bonuses or can simply nail a “catch all” by being on the active roster for more than 165 days.

The Rays would obviously like to keep ace David Price in the fold, but they may not be able to hold on to him long-term. Price says that he would like to find middle ground with the Rays on a contract extension, but cautions that he won’t “sell himself short”, writes Yahoo’s Tim Brown. The American League Cy Young Award winner is set to hit the open market three seasons from now.

The Red Sox have a logjam behind the plate but they have yet to ask Jarrod Saltalamacchia about playing first base in 2013, writes Rob Bradford of WEEI.com. For his part, Salty says that he feels that catcher is his natural position. The 27-year-old would appear to be a trade candidate given Boston’s surplus.